Grrrrrrrr

Bad

Eating has been slightly out of control. I'm not sure what is going on with that, but I just want to eat, and I've been indulging my cravings, especially sweets. I might be logging my food, but I haven't exactly been meeting my calorie goals.

Before my scale's batteries went dead the other day, I weighed in at 280 pounds. This is total red zone territory and kind of terrifies me, though looking back in my HappyScale history, the last time I was at that weight was in early January and a week later I was back down to 271. Whatever. NOW I need to take action to make sure that I don't do any more damage. Ideally I didn't want to be outside a five-pound range from 272 (100 pounds lost). This really shouldn't have happened, but seriously – if I don't start taking this seriously, I'm going to be in trouble. I can't do that to myself. (I will be replacing the scale's batteries!)

I still haven't embarked on a regular strength training routine, which I really need. That said, after Monday I'll have a little more free time – that's the last day I'll be getting ready for my next art exhibition, and I don't have another big one coming up until September. I have two gym memberships that I need to start using!

Good

I went for a run last night after work (3 miles) and another one this morning (2 miles).

I've agreed to meet my co-worker and friend Kristen to meet up every Thursday morning before work for a run. She's also doing NoBo 3.0 (and is the speediest of the group, I might add!), and we both have trouble fitting our homework runs in the evening. It's great to have an accountability buddy!

Me and Kristen post-run at the Delaware Park loop this morning! Gettin' it done!

I have been logging my food and tracking calories again on MyFitnessPal the past few days (user name is radiosilents if you'd like to connect). Still, if I'm going way over my calories... I just really need to remind myself why I want to do what I am trying to do.

Grrrrrr.

FAST

Just a quick hello.

I wanted to report that I am now FAST. Yep, it's true!

OK, maybe not your fast, but definitely my fast.

On Saturday, after a week's delay due to snowy and super cold weather, the new session of No Boundaries running group started again. Hooray! It was a little windy, but not very cold and just a little slush left over here and there from the previous week's storm. My group, 3.0, did our time trial, which is the measure they use to place us in pace groups.

To be honest, I wasn't feeling very peppy and I really didn't feel like I was going to run anything resembling fast, time trial or no. I just figured, well, I'll do my best and get it done. I'll end up in the slowest pace group anyway. No big deal. We did about a half mile warm up, slow run, and then were instructed to run two miles as fast as we possibly could. What happens is they take your average pace from that run and add on a minute or two to place you in the right pace group – the aim is to slow you down a bit so that you can focus on distance and endurance.

Well, anyway, there I was feeling crappy after the warm up. Oh no. Blegh.

It turns out that my first mile was in the 12 minute range (don't have an exact figure, but that is what I was told by the mentors running with me and those manning the route). What?!?

Me? Running a 12-some minute mile? I am still shaking my head in disbelief and thinking that surely there was some mistake.

Long story short, I ran the two miles in 26:16. That means my average pace was 13:08!!! Please, just call me Flash.

I have not run this fast ever as an adult. I'm pretty sure I ran about that fast when I was on the cross country team for one season in high school, if not a little faster.

This was also after not having run for two weeks.

I am still training for a half marathon, though if you look at my training log, you'd never know it. Oops. Well, I have one more crazy week of frantically painting and getting ready for my next art exhibition. Once that's over, I'm putting it into high gear and getting serious about the training.

How about the eating? Meh. Not great, not terrible. Still in the low-mid 270s. Still OK with it.

I'm tired and wired after a long day of painting, which means I should hop into bed and try to get a good night's sleep for my big day back to my job tomorrow. *snore*

Interesting Times

Happy Valentines Day, lovelies! I know there are at least a few of you out there. :)

We keep it very low-key at our house and don't really do anything special, so no worries about too much chocolate or an overindulgent meal for me!

Since I last wrote, I've been slightly "off". I don't grieve particularly well, and I tend to eat my feelings a lot. With the loss of Alistair cat, this was no exception. As a result, I'm back up to 275 today, but that was after NOT weighing for a few days – honestly, I was worried it would be much worse. Today was reasonable, eating-wise, so hoping that I'm getting back on track a bit.

I haven't been exercising at all. My last run was on February 5th, and then Alistair left us and then we got a brutal cold snap and... I have all sorts of excuses why not. The Alistair thing I'd give myself a couple or few days, sure, but the rest of it? Baloney. I have memberships at two gyms, so weather is not a good excuse unless it's blizzarding. I suppose the one legit "excuse" I do have is that I've been getting ready for my next art exhibition which goes up at the beginning of March. That means lots of time in the painting studio, pretty much any free time I have. It's just two more weeks of this schedule and I am looking forward to not being so frantic (my own fault, I can procrastinate like nobody's business!) and getting back to relative normal. I dare say it is difficult to have a regular workout regimen AND work full-time AND have a relationship AND get my painting in. I admit, I could be better at using my time but quite frankly I DO see value in resting my mind and body by just hanging out/vegging out and watching movies with my partner, and/or doing various internet stuffs.

Anyway. So that's where I've been, in mind and body.

I've also made some decisions about what I want to do moving forward. As you may know, I've been floating in the 270s (with some dips into the 260s here and there) since June of last year. While that's been a bit frustrating, I'm also really glad that I haven't been gaining the whole time, either! More or less, I've maintained about a 100 pound loss, and I'm really proud of and happy about that. At the same time, I was really getting stressed out about the idea of having to lose another 100 pounds and feeling overwhelmed... that it was an impossible task. Intellectually I know this couldn't be farther from the truth, but emotionally it just feels like too much to handle if I only think in terms of the big picture.

So I removed that picture from the wall, at least for now.

What I have decided to focus on is to get back to the 260s. In fact, my new goal is 260 pounds. That's it. That's all she wrote.

The reality is, I have realized that if I didn't ever lose any more weight, I'd still be pretty happy about where I am now. I have been happy! There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about at least one aspect of my life that has been positively impacted by the weight I have lost so far. I feel like I have accomplished a stabilization, even a normalization of my body. I think my doctor would agree – all my numbers are in normal ranges except my weight (for now). I can move easily and do everything I want to be able to do. Would those things be even easier if I lost more weight? (Especially thinking about running) Yes, for sure. But my weight is not stopping me from doing anything any longer, and that was the most important thing to me in the first place.

So I just thought, maybe give myself a break for a while. Well, I have, I know. But this time, a conscious one. Let my body kind of get used to where it's at for a while. And let me not feel quite so obsessive about everything. It has been a big relief to be logging every single morsel on MyFitnessPal or check in there every ten minutes to see what's going on.

That doesn't mean that I am going back to old habits (though for some recent days it was starting to feel that way a little) and gaining all the weight back. I still have some business to attend to in the form of 15 pounds (Ah! So much better than 100!), not to mention training for a half marathon! I have plenty of work to do to keep me busy, happy, and healthy. I'll revisit this and see how things feel in another couple months.

Until then, I'm exercising intuitive eating and daily weighing as my method... and of course, half marathon training.

It's exciting!

Grieving and Bingeing

Bad news today.

Our oldest cat, Alistair, who was just a month short of 16, passed away this morning at home. He had been in decline the past month or so, and yesterday his breathing started getting labored. My partner called me home early from work and we were able to have a last nice evening together with him. He seemed happy and was purring, but obviously becoming weaker and weaker. This morning he was worse until...

We've had him in our family since he (and my relationship with my partner) was about six months old, so this is a really tough loss.

Alistair cat, 2000–2016.

It was rough. I was able to do what needed to be done, though. (Is this what real adulting is like?) But, the stress and emotion was overwhelming, and true to form, the first thing I wanted to do once his affairs were in order was to eat and eat and eat.

Last year I had little setbacks with the loss of an old friend as well as my uncle. I'm determined that with this, I can get back to normal eating for the rest of the day and definitely tomorrow. 

I hope it doesn't seem too weird that I'm sitting here writing in my blog about my food issues, but honestly – it's a way for me to deal with the loss, I guess. It feels weird to me, too. I'm sure a lot of people go through this sort of thing and I think it will be helpful to share. I'll even go so far as to tell you what I ate today between 2pm and 5:30pm.

• A 2-liter bottle of diet soda (I drink water 90% of the time)

• Three slices of deep-dish pizza (though more like thick-crusted, not Chicago-style)

• A pint of ice cream

• Most of a regular-sized bag of cheddar cheese popcorn

• A couple handfuls of Cheetos

Ugh. Of course it didn't make me feel any better, except for the first delicious bites of any of it. Beyond that, it was fairly mindless shoveling and just feeling sorry for myself. I tell you what, I don't have the desire to continue in this mode, so hopefully I'll be good and just be with my feelings without trying to numb them with food. Drinks, not so sure... I may still have a couple.

Anyway. That's all for now. I think I took myself back a couple weeks with this episode, but I will still not give up. 

I'm so, so sad.